The Dating Bender Page 4

  I did my rendition of the sexy eyelash bat that Babs taught me. She’d said it would guarantee sex on the spot. I must have done it incorrectly because, without as much as a blink, Sheldon was gone, and I was left waiting for the intern at baggage claim. Sitting on top of my pink leopard luggage, I felt animalistic for sure, just not in the way I imagined. Sexually frustrated was more like it. Sheldon used to always attempt to pleasure me orally even though it made me uncomfortable, but it had been months since he’d even tried.

  It took Ivan, the pimple-faced geek, an hour to find me. He had such a huge stick up his ass I wondered how he was able to walk me down the street to my hotel.

  ***

  The entire three days of my visit were spent holed up in my room or touring Atlanta and the World of Coca-Cola. The latter grew old after the third visit given my decision to shy away from Coke products when Shape magazine revealed that cola made you bloated.

  When we arrived back at the airport at the end of my visit to check my luggage, Ivan killed time by tweeting constantly, snorting after each tweet. It was hard to imagine that he or any one of his dweeb friends could be that entertaining.

  Sheldon had been so busy with work while I was in town that we barely had any quality time together, unless you count brushing our teeth at the his-and-her sinks in our hotel room. God knows what he was doing all day and night that rendered him so exhausted that, by the end of each day, he couldn’t muster the energy to make love with me. Not even a quickie during the entire stint of my stay.

  As Ivan tweeted, I replayed the lowlights of my trip. Night one: Sheldon shuffled into my hotel room and flopped onto the bed. Following Redbook magazine’s guidance, I took that as my cue to pounce and seduce. I mounted Sheldon and attempted to rip open his shirt purring, “Let me see those tantalizing teats!” His buttons did not fly open as effortlessly as you see in soap operas. Instead, Sheldon rolled me off of him and said, “Sam, I’ve got to wear that shirt tomorrow. Hands off.” I pouted and he repented with, “I love you, but not tonight. I’m too stressed. I promise to make you proud one day.”

  The next morning, following GQ’s advice, I tried to arouse Sheldon with a sexually charged wakeup call. He was so startled he accidentally knocked me out of bed thinking I was the alarm clock. By the time I regained my footing, he had already hightailed it to the bathroom.

  What man could go without intercourse for as long as we had, then finally get his wife in the same room after weeks apart and not make a single advance? Aren’t men supposed to have urges?

  Of all the warnings Sheldon’s friends and family gave me during our engagement, nobody mentioned that he was a camel in the sex department. Clearly, all the days of withholding intercourse in my youth were coming back to bite me.

  Ivan gawked and broke up the horror film of my so-called life.

  “Mrs. Milton, Mr. Milton said to tell you he was too busy to make it to your send-off, but he wishes you safe travels. He’ll catch up with you on the flip side,” he said.

  Did he just salute me? If he was mocking me, I would knock him off his skinny little feet.

  I panted for air in the terminal while getting rammed by every person who walked by. Geek-face stared at me as if he expected a tip. The only tip I had for him was to stop tweeting and start living a real life.

  Instead, I said, “Thanks, Ivan.”

  I found solace in the fact that he was probably more uncomfortable than me.

  He yelled over his shoulder, “Take care, Mrs. M., so nice to hang with you!”

  The plane ride was a blip. A text from Sheldon popped up right after I landed. “Sorry about the weekend. I know this has been rough, but it will all work out, I promise.” Sweet sentiment. If only I could believe it. When I got off the plane, I searched for my bags and tried to forget the whole disappointing Atlanta trip ever happened, which, when I thought about it, it never had.

  ***

  “Sammy we’re glad to have you back. Things have been nutty since you left. I hope you’ve worked out all of your marital issues and had lots of dirty sex because I need you to focus. You and Superstar are paired up on the Apple deal now, which is key for keeping our company afloat. No pressure, honey,” Babs said, followed by her signature smile and eyelash bat.

  She had gotten stoned and opted for a provocative purple sweater dress for our meeting. But even high, Babs commanded attention.

  As Superstar sauntered into the room, I swear he smelled like sex. Maybe it was just the fact I was so pent up I was relegated to sniffing it out as a means of sexual fulfillment. It felt like I had blue bells—the female equivalent to blue balls. My loins ached.

  To further my homecoming woes, in one short week Superstar had become world-renowned for his strides in the social media world. I had been forced to watch replays of his f-ing interview on Good Morning America while we waited for him to arrive. I watched intently trying to see the magic that everyone else saw.

  His first appearance on GMA came when he was only fourteen and had already become one of the most sought-after hackers of his time. Government agencies hired him to crack their systems to uncover vulnerabilities. His career skyrocketed from there.

  Whatever. Good for him. And me. Everyone was so busy talking about his appearance that it left little time for them to notice my lack of a marital life. Perhaps they assumed my husband was an imaginary one, since no one had ever met him.

  I, unlike everybody else, was not enamored with Superstar. He was pompous, short, and had coarse hair. I’d never trusted short men. And the contrast between his choppy dark locks and pale complexion was frightful. Not to mention he was combative and tried his best to make me look inferior whenever we worked together.

  I couldn’t be sure if I was paranoid or clairvoyant, but it felt like he was trying to oust me from my post. That made no sense since he was supposed to be the superstar, after all. Maybe he hated to see women in positions of power. Whatever. I consoled myself by remembering I exceled at competition, despite my father’s preachings to the contrary.

  Superstar sat down next to me, breaking my mental standoff. Thankfully, I’d put on deodorant twice like Teen Vogue had suggested. His eyes lingered on mine.

  “Would you two just pork each other and be done with it so we can get back to work?” Babs said.

  “Shut it. I don’t pork co-workers, or anybody for that matter. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m married. Why do I have to keep telling you people that?”

  “Easy, babe, maybe it has something to do with the fact that you never talk about your husband. I’m starting to think he doesn’t exist,” Super-dork said.

  “Well, nobody asked you. And my name is Samantha, not babe. Got it?” I snapped as I scratched my nose. “Wouldn’t it be prudent to get off my personal life and back to the marketing proposal now that you’ve finally arrived?”

  I feigned boredom by gazing out the conference room window and twiddling my hair. My non-sex-inducing highlights felt ridiculous, having failed the mission in Atlanta. At least my butt-hugging jeans and formfitting pink baby-tee looked good. My body still had it, even if Sheldon didn’t want it.

  “Sure Honey, we’re all yours,” Babs said.

  I reeled in my last remnants of composure and sailed through the proposal. I was certain Superstar was going to jump in and take over the presentation because he typically did so, but he just sat back and listened intently.

  “Great work, you two. That settles it. I’m sending you both to New York next month to present this to the investors,” Babs said.

  “Of course. I’ll rock the meeting as always,” he said.

  How fitting. I finally get a career-defining opportunity, only it’s with an egomaniac tech geek. I wasn’t sure his big head and I would fit on the same airplane.

  “Babs, I thought you were going, not me. You should really go.”

  With a glare like icy steel, he got up off his arrogant ass and leaned across the table, planting his elbows right in front of me. He and hi
s coarse hair leered. I burped lightly under my breath, hoping to throw him.

  “Sam, don’t be an idiot. It’s our brainchild, and while I hate to admit it, you showed traces of brilliance. Don’t let your obvious attraction to me get in the way of business. We’re hitting Manhattan together,” the smug pig said.

  Who the hell did he think he was? Feelings for him? Please. We were not in high school anymore. I wasn’t sure of much in my life, but there was one thing I was absolutely positive about: I most certainly did not have feelings for Superstar.

  Wait a minute. He thought I was brilliant?

  Chapter Six

  Somewhere between Pikes Peak and the Empire State Building, I had a revelation. It was not normal to fight about somebody coming to visit somebody else when those somebodies were practically still newlyweds. You were supposed to be yearning for each other so much that there would be nothing to fight about, right? If Mr. Sheldon Milton didn’t have time for me, no problem. I could be just as big of a workaholic as he was. Starting immediately.

  Over a very late-night, borderline-romantic dinner with Superstar the evening before our investor meeting, we sat at a primo table in the Rainbow Room. The city twinkled in the background. He leaned over, encroaching on my personal space.

  “Here’s how we’re gonna work this. I’ll engage the women with my technical prowess, and then you’ll seduce the men in the room. We’ll dominate as we demonstrate how our company will deliver the best marketing campaigns, which will ultimately bring the next generation of social media to the masses. In due time we will make Facebook, Instagram, and all the others of that ilk obsolete,” he said.

  Then he smirked at me.

  I sat quietly for a moment, trying to come up with the right comeback.

  “What microchip did you fall off of? You actually expect me to seduce the room? This is not the 1950s for God’s sake. Has nothing changed in the battle of women in the workplace?”

  “Please. I didn’t mean you would bang everyone in the meeting. I was talking about seducing them figuratively by the force of the concepts we’ll deliver, the way Jobs did every time he walked into a pitch,” he said. “You still don’t get it. We’re about to change the way people relate to one another, and that makes people hot,” he said as he stroked his barely-there goatee.

  “Oh, well if you put it like that, I can certainly do my part.” I giggled like a fifteen-year-old girl.

  My attempt at staring down the legendary Manhattan skyline to deflect attention away from our supposed hotness didn’t work. With New York City as the backdrop, under a certain type of lighting, Superstar could look fairly decent. Definitely not hot, but not totally repulsive.

  “Good. We know our roles. So let’s sit back, enjoy the food and the view, and if you could find a way somewhere within that tightly wound ass of yours to relax, I would appreciate it.”

  God, he was brazen. I could relax, I wasn’t made of tin, and I greatly resented the insinuation.

  After some stellar New York strip, a succulent Petite Sirah, and some surprisingly okay company, Superstar dropped his armor-like shell long enough for me to learn he had been married and divorced.

  He wore his divorce exactly how I imagined I would, like a badge of dishonor. He had been madly in love with his bride until he learned that, since day one of their marriage, she had been having an affair with his best friend. From the point he found them in bed together, he said his approach to life had changed. That explained his obnoxious personality.

  Not that Sheldon and I would ever share a fate like Superstar’s. I was too young to be a divorcée. But still, the lack of attention felt just as painful as an infidelity. In either case, we were not good enough, or worthy enough, to hold someone’s attention.

  Maybe he wasn’t totally gross, just wounded and compensating. Perhaps it would help our working relationship if I let down my guard just a tad for this one night. Are you really that stupid?

  ***

  At the onset of my first high profile investor meeting, I learned something interesting about myself. I’d spent the better part of my life being attracted to beautiful boy-toys who were tall, stunning, fabulously featured, and slightly dangerous. The type where you never cared what they said because you were too busy staring at their bodies.

  Superstar was far from that type. He wasn’t even in the same galaxy; however, on a blustery cold morning in New York City, he possessed one thing that those toys and Sheldon never had: a genius brain.

  He had a big, fat, wildly intelligent cranium that cut through my sanity like a switchblade. The way he waved his shapely hands as he spoke about our backend interface entranced me. I felt as if he were conveying some sort of code-speak to me and only me. I understood his shorthand. Or if I wanted to be literal, longhand. His very long hands.

  Somewhere in between our presentation on the intricacies of our app, and his pontificating about the future of social networking, I fell under Superstar’s spell. Undo the spell or go straight to hell!

  “And that, my friends, is how NetSocial proposes to shake up the communications continuum,” he purred.

  Hold on! What was wrong with me? This man-child was offensive, cocky, and repulsive on every level. You would think the fact that he was dressed up like a dork, wearing a silver silk shirt, pleated khakis, and white sneakers, would do something to deter my sexual fantasies. I gulped down a sprinkled doughnut, which only got me more revved up.

  InStyle magazine advised against matching silk and cotton. There was also the fact that in the months we’d known each other, he had repeatedly tried to throw me under the bus, or in his case, the keyboard. Like that time when we were co-presenting at a client meeting and five minutes before our presentation, he took my notecards and told me to, “Wing it. We don’t use crutches. We captivate. You’re better than this.” Granted, I zipped through the presentation without them, but his stress-inducing tactic was bonkers given the stakes.

  The longer he continued to rattle off techno-geek-speak, the more I found myself melting into my chair. I took a subtle inventory of the other women in the room and they seemed equally enraptured. One particularly perky woman appeared to be salivating. The men in the room watched his every maneuver, surely hoping to poach some of his moves.

  “And yes, ladies, it is that simple. A social media application that will grow and change as you do, one tap and swipe at a time,” he said.

  “What about Facebook?” a willowy blonde squeaked.

  “Excuse the lewd comment in advance,” he said. “But screw Facebook.”

  How in God’s name could I be attracted to this goof? I was working, for Christ sake. Get ahold of your libido, you moron. His arrogance was legendary, even for him. Who was stupid enough to mock Facebook? Yet, instead of being appalled, I sweated beneath my undergarments.

  I couldn’t be certain, but it seemed, in-between all of his highfalutin geek-speak, Superstar was flirting with me. Why would God put me in this compromising situation during one of the most important meetings of my career? The erotic way he stroked his goatee upended me.

  Christ, what should I do? Stop swearing for starters. Ignore him? He’d eventually have to stop the advances, assuming he didn’t want to botch the meeting.

  I couldn’t stop staring at him. Was I being influenced by the heady presentation, or was I just impaired due to a lack of sleep? Maybe it was because he forced his eyes to twinkle at me. At last, his self-imposed moniker made sense. On the most basic level, his name alone should have repelled me. What grown man-child actually nicknamed himself Superstar?

  Of course, he wasn’t ogling me. He knew I was married and he wasn’t privy to Sheldon’s resistance to visiting me. I must have been hallucinating. I just needed sex. Sorry, Mother, despite what you think, women do have needs in that department. We’re not just lifeless baby-making machines.

  “Samantha, is there anything else you’d like to add?” he said.

  “What? Huh, excuse me?” I mumbled. “No, I�
��ll pass.”

  Ha, let him take that and stuff it up his flirting ass.

  “Samantha is more humble than she needs to be. What she’s trying to say is that our app is going to rock the marketplace,” he said, slapping his hands together, as if conjuring sex with each swipe.

  After sucking in some stale recycled air in an attempt to quell the urge to regurgitate my breakfast, I spoke. “Yes, we are going to change things up; this will be a game changer.”

  Shut up, shut up. If you don’t have a valuable contribution stop speaking, Forbes magazine’s golden rule.

  I looked at Superstar, willing him to speak. One gaze in his direction made me perspire. I channeled my mother by choosing to deny my oddly erotic feelings toward Superstar. Then I did some deep breathing like Yoga magazine always suggested. All that did was make me dizzy. Hopefully, it had more to do with being locked inside a sizzling hot conference room that reeked of cheap perfume than with Superstar’s sexual advances. I scratched my nose and moved on to rustling and smoothing my tasteful cream crepe pencil skirt.

  “Our digital social exchanges will never be the same, and you’ll have NetSocial and me to thank for that. After all, I built the technology with my own bare hands,”—big hands, very big hands—he said, “and if you all don’t take the offer now, somebody else will. Peace out. Sam, we’re out of here,” he said as he winked at me.

  Finally! The Superstar I knew and hated had reentered the room, just in time to swagger out of the boardroom with me trailing behind in the dust of his brilliance.

  I prayed like hell that I would make it out of New York without doing anything stupid. Well, aside from my inability to speak intelligently during the investor meeting. I one-upped myself by scratching my nose for the duration of the flight home. A fact Superstar was more than happy to point out. Pig.

  ***

  Thankfully, God had forced the fall foliage to burst while we were gone. The aspen trees shimmered so brightly you would have thought the forest was on fire. The glimmering effect provided an ample distraction from my faltering moral compass.